By now I was hoping to have some more video, commentary and pictures posted from the Lucky Gunner blogger shoot, but I just arrived home. What was supposed to be an 11 hour drive turned into a 13 hour drive thanks to the incident Bitter mentioned in the previous post. I am both simultaneously exhausted and wide awake. Not normally being a coffee drinker, I make exceptions in cases where I need to stay alert for a protracted period of time. Thank God for Starbucks double espressos, or I never would have made it.

Despite being willing to drive 10 hours at the drop of a hat by myself in my 20s, I think my days of doing that are over. It’s not the body having difficulty so much as the mind. I find I just get fatigued a lot sooner than I did 10 years ago. When I was in my 20s, I’d be throwing back Mountain Dews all the way, arrive at my destination, and go right to sleep. No problem. Now I get back, want to sleep, but can’t because I’m wired from all the caffeine. Nothing a couple of drinks won’t fix, but counteracting stims with depressants is one step away from being found dead on your toilet. If Lucky Gunner does this next year, I’m definitely bringing someone I can share the driving with.

I guess the 10,000 dollar question is, was the weekend worth the drive? You bet it was. More video coming. It’s going to make our opponents wet themselves.

6 Responses to “More Commentary and Video Coming”

I have the same problem after a long drive, and it’s not the caffeine because the same thing happens even when I make the trip pretty much caffeine free. I can be dead tired, but need an hour or 2(ans a drink or 2 usually helps!) to unwind before I can sleep. I think it probably has something to do with being at such a high level of alert for so long.

I’m 60 years old, did a 6000 mile road trip last year. The trick I have learned is … seedless grapes! The perfect road food — got yer calories, yer sugar, yer water, and they are bite sized without the mess of chips or other fine foods. Sugar snap peas are a decent tradeoff. Cherry tomatoes work too. But seedless grapes are the best.

Seriously. Just eat mostly them, you won’t need drinks, and you can skip the caffeine. If you feel tired, pull over on the shoulder, walk around the car, back, in and away you go. Don’t stop for a big lunch.

Dinner is where you get the main meal. I seldom eat breakfast, but if you do, I don’t think it will interfere with the drive like a big lunch.

There’s a song I have kicking around my hard drive where the refrain goes something like “I can’t party as hard as I did when I was 21.” As I get closer to 40 than 30, that line makes more sense, and it’s not just “party,” it’s X, where X is a whole bunch of verbs.

(The refrain also includes “I fought with Jose Cuervo” and “went two out of three with old jack d” just so you know what the song is about)

I’m in my early thirties, and I’ve already noticed this. If I don’t get enough sleep (it seems to require two or three days in a row) I can get a migraine. Of course, it could be that other things trigger those migraines, and fatigue just makes me more susceptible to those triggers.

This really annoys me, because I’d like to take time off from sleep every now and again to pursue an interest late into the night (reading, mathematics, etc) that I otherwise couldn’t pursue.

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